


Tasks to which I am Unsuited, by Murderbot

by florahart



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 19:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17147807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Finding the right employment is hard even if you have people skills and interests and stuff.  If you're a murderbot, refining your work-wanted ad is something of a process.





	Tasks to which I am Unsuited, by Murderbot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrift/gifts).



> This wasn't an assigned fic; I largely just wanted an excuse to play with Murderbot and so I have gifted it to someone with a broad Murderbot request.
> 
> In other news, I didn't "read" the source material; I listened to it on Audible. Ergo, misspelling is likelyish in words peculiar to the canon. You can tell me, or ignore :)

So once I was on my own, no matter how much Dr. Mensaah wanted me to just able to do what I wanted, I knew I was going to have to get a job. I mean, we've talked about that already. However, after some of the incidents I've previously detailed, I found I'd somewhat lost my taste for adventure, and for people and bots getting dead, and so after a few minutes' consideration, I looked at the want ads and started applying for regular jobs. Ones that didn't require any of my SecUnit skills. Ones a person might take while, I don't know, going to school. I've heard that's a thing.

Or I suppose I could just say, ones a person might take, full stop.

I'd come a long, uncomfortable way as far as my social skills, and anyway, it wasn't going to be worse than some of my previous work.

I was expecting perhaps a nice boring job cleaning out stalls recently occupied by large quadrupeds with diarrhea, a task which humans find distasteful and honestly, so do I, but I can disable my olfactory inputs and watch medias while my hands, in gloves because obviously I don't want whatever the SecUnit variant of the horsevomits is, do the work.

However, those jobs were all spoken for, apparently by some heretofore unnoticed subset of humans who liked that sort of task.

I have no idea.

So I cast a wider net, by which I mean, I simply made myself available for any sort of general-purpose employment by posting a skill list and a lightly-doctored photograph, and picked up the first thing anyone gave me. Again, wasn't going to be worse.

I thought.

This is the point at which you laugh at me and remind me that humans are not only fragile and poor at the more brutal logics, but absurd and irrational as well.

Anyway: jobs. You'd think it would be clear by looking at me that there are just certain things I won't be good at.

Floral design, for instance.

Fine, I have opinions about matchy-matchy designs and arrangements in which there's not much variance in color saturation, and everything I suggested would look an average of twelve hundred percent better and just because this is your first dance doesn't excuse your execrable lack of taste, Mortimark (your parents are assholes, by the way). 

I didn't say that part out loud (well, okay, not _very_ loud), but who makes a corsage that color?

Actually, on consideration of the dress, I have to say at least the abomination I provided is a distraction; I don't know how the young woman is ever going to stand a chance if, as I understand is commonplace based on my media, the dance is interrupted by some sort of primordial catastrophe.

Oh, and look, I have access to databases. Do not try to tell me the fucking giant genmod Venus Flytrap in the middle of your insipid pattern of pointlessly GMO'ed blue and chartreuse marigolds is an expression of your abiding love of your mother-in-law, Frank. Even if you named it in her honor. Yes, I get the reference, you're not funny, Audrey deserves better. She can't help if she was bred to be a killer. 

I didn't say that (very) out loud, either.

(I took her home, if you're wondering. Audrey. The plant, that is, not the mother-in-law. If that asshole had inexplicably figured out what I really was and wanted me to kill his mother in law, we were going to need a different kind of contract, thanks. Also he was going to need to demonstrate she was a danger to _him_ so I could legitimately save him from that danger, which was no longer a requirement of my programming but fuck that, I have ethics)

I guess my disdain for the customers showed, though, since I was fired after only four days. 

I set up my work-wanted ad again immediately and indicated I was not suited for anything artsy.

So. Puppysitting. There's another one you'd think would be a hard pass. I own a giant flesh-rending plant and I'm made of guns. Come on.

Unfortunately, I had already accepted what I _thought_ was a job _walking_ the puppy, and given I am designed to keep actually engaging in combat even when a lot of my skin has holes in it and people are putting dents in me with explosive detonations, walking is a thing I felt I could do indefinitely and also if the puppy were the object of an attempted puppynapping, I would be able to intervene readily, but no, they wanted me to bring it home and play with it.

I do not play.

No, I mean it. I watch media, but that's passive. It's entertainment _for me_. I don't entertain other people. Or their dogs.

Even if the dogs are small and adorably green with a cute little bullseye pattern around one eye that I definitely do not have to set up an infinite-loop reminder not to shoot at (whatever, I have to do that for a lot of things) and they hop on their back legs and wag their whole bodies.

By the way, I now have experience with exactly one puppies, and what I know about puppies is, they do not walk. 

Like, ever.

They bounce, jump, roll, try to balance upright, whine, beg, flop their ears about, run in circles, run in a straight line, loll their tongues out of their mouths and, alarmingly, continue doing any and all of those things until they collapse.

It turns out the collapse is napping. Puppynapping. A whole other kind.

Fortunately, I remembered to check the puppy's vitals before attempting to download material on juvenile canine CPR.

I declined the subsequent puppysitting offers; puppies are even more tiring than people. I updated my ad again: only large animals. Then I thought about it and changed that to large _domesticated, trained_ animals. This doesn't technically exclude someone being the kind of jackass that would keep a lion in his home to eat guests who piss him off (I mean, the eating guests who piss him off part I relate to, but again, not the lion's fault and who would take the blame? The lion.) But it would probably keep me from being hired to oversee any, like, carnivorous dinosaur theme parks or similar; again my medias tell me people might be exactly that stupid.

So. Up next. Swimming instructor. Honestly. 

In principle, there's no reason I can't navigate in water. However, I am made of metal. _Heavy_ metal. Not the kind the asshole Julian who hired me was playing so loud he couldn't hear me for nearly the entire duration of our interview. I also technically couldn't hear him; however, I have a lot of skills, so I compared reading his lips and the partial file I got from threading out the frequency of his (stupid) voice, and so I know he was not truthful about how this was going to involve me being in water with children.

Also, he couldn't hear my name, so apparently he thinks it's cool to call me "Banjo." 

I think it's cool to implant a recurring, painful, nonlethal antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection in his nasal passages.

Look, it wasn't hard. He wipes his nose on his sleeve constantly. I just made sure it was tuned to his biorecord – I'm an asshole, but I don't need the entire spa coming down with MRSA because at least three or four percent of the population hasn't yet shown asshole qualities – and discreetly squirted during my exit interview.

It was predictable, but I didn't say anything: when the swimming instructor sinks to the bottom and stays there, kids, and also their overbearing mothers who stay to watch and correct their lessons, freak out.

There was some chaos.

It's handled, and since everyone thinks it was some guy named _Banjo_ , whatever, it's fine.

Anyway. That was yesterday, and back to the want-ads for me. No art, no small animals, no large tubs of water, and I immediately got a call from Director Stanhope.

And that's how I came to be the storytime librarian.

So.

Who would like to pick our first story?


End file.
